


must be the shock

by quicksparrows



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, Sexual Content, disaster trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:54:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23708716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: His shirt smells of ash and alkaline, and under that he is very very still, like stone, but his heart is trembling.(Set during chapter 13 of Remake.)
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 8
Kudos: 254





	must be the shock

**Author's Note:**

> dude this _game_

His arms around her should be comforting, but instead she feels like she’s going to be ill. His grip is tight and the metal posts of his bracer dig into her shoulder blades. His shirt smells of ash and alkaline, and under that he is very very still, like stone, but his heart is trembling. She can feel it through her own. Tifa feels disgusted for being relieved, but there’s something human about it — relief and trembling both.

There has been something deeply wrong with him. Something deeply wrong with her, too.

“Cloud, you’re hurting me.”

He lets her go. His expression is apologetic. His eyes are glassy. Tifa’s eyes drop to the ground, to lemon-lilies and white anemones under their boots. Cloud starts to say something but doesn’t.

Tifa counts the tiny freckles dusted across his cheeks. His dark eyelashes, the shattered ice in his irises. He lingers close like he wants to be there, and it's so funny to her. When they were kids, he couldn't even face her when they talked. Used to tell her his plans for his life with his back turned to her. Something's been different about him for weeks, but she still can't figure it out.

Here, maybe she gets it.

They could have died a hundred times in the last twenty-four hours alone. Tens of thousands _did._

"Are you okay?" she asks.

Their first kiss is crushing and brief. Tifa barely processes it as her first with him when the second comes, a heartbeat later, is slower, and yet more desperate. Tifa has never really thought about kissing him, at least not since she was a girl, so it is a strange feeling to recall and experience at once. His gloves hand slips under her chin, a finger laid along her jaw. He presses in. She leans in too, up on the balls of her feet; he's not much taller but she wants to be close.

The night above is very still. The wind — the only natural breeze she’s ever felt in Midgar — rustles the gardens soundlessly. A prickle runs up her bare midriff.

Cloud drops his chin suddenly, breaking them apart.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, as he paces away.

“It’s okay. I’m sorry, too.”

Her head throbs. This is the last anything any of them need to deal with.

He paces back. He moves to go again, and she stops him with a hand around his wrist. His metal bangle is not nearly as inviting to hold as his wrist. His eyes meet hers and they look far away.

"Do you want to go back to the room?" Then he pauses. There's an unspoke something-else on the tip of his tongue.

"No," Tifa says. She's the one holding onto him in that moment. She looks back at the house. The lights are all out, and some of the windows open. Five adults and a child in a house built for two. She shakes her head. "Someone will hear."

"Mm."

He glances down. So does she. Aerith's flower beds sprawl out around them, pale under the moonlamps. Tifa shifts; the flowers aren't so dense here, but those remaining are already bent and broken, crushed just as well under her boots and his. She swallows her breath. They'll die, too. As if there hadn't been enough carnage for one day, enough worlds raining down on the living.

But does it matter?

She feels like she's supposed to care. She tried to keep that one flower alive, after all, but now it was crushed. What was forty more? Fifty? A thousand? A whole slum worth?

It must be the shock.

She looks to Cloud and nods.

He is pushy, but only because it’s efficient to be; he lays her in the flowerbed by scooping her up and setting her down, and it’s tender in a way she didn’t expect. The flowers are dense, their stalks stiff even as they bend beneath her. They are damp against the small of her back. The earth is below and the stars are above and yet she is in a strange place with more green than she’s seen in years. Cloud settles between her knees and she shimmies just enough to get her hips aligned with his; he makes a soft sound, something like surprise. He watches her face as though instructions might appear there. It’s a lot, to have his eyes on her so intently.

Her mind drifts from the day's events and slides right to Cloud's groin, pressed against hers. The thick leather of his belt hits her bare stomach. There's a soft metallic noise from his belt buckle on hers, and he breathes in sharply through his nose as he kisses her again. He makes this _noise_ when she leverages a foot to press herself up against him, halfway to a whine, and he drags her hips higher in his lap. Tifa feels like a teenager, rutting up against a boy like this. She supposes she isn't much older than one. Neither is he. To think they ever got to be kids –– people in the slums don't usually––

“Tifa...”

He trails. Tifa nods fervently. It doesn’t really matter what it is. The pleats of her miniskirt are disheveled against the fly of his trousers. The crotch of his pants is dramatically tented. Her breath falls heavy in anticipation.

“Please,” she mutters.

In the narrow space between them he fumbles with his fly, and Tifa hears the zipper even over the sounds of the night. This sector is more still than anywhere else she's ever been in Midgar; there's scarcely even sound in the distance. She lifts her head to watch him take out his cock. It's too dark to really see. She wishes she could.

There's a hollow thumping in her groin, anticipating whatever this is, and Cloud is heavy against her.

Her shorts are tight, and the fabric tenses when she reaches down to pull it aside. Cloud folds himself over her, a hand between them, too. Tifa gasps.

“Are you okay?” he asks, the same way he might ask her on the battlefield. He is sweet like that, even if thinks he's not. Even if he pretends otherwise. He hasn't asked to be paid again, not since the plate fell, and she feels confident he won't. She trusts him –– "Tifa?"

“What? Oh, yes,” she says.

 _It really must be the shock,_ she thinks, panting underneath him.


End file.
